


Maybe More

by erisolsprite



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Flushed Romance | Matesprits, M/M, POV Second Person, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, mixed quadrants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 20:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erisolsprite/pseuds/erisolsprite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone is having mental breakdowns after being on the meteor for so long, but maybe things will be okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe More

One thousand and ninety one days. You have been on this piece of rock for every minute of one thousand ninety one days. And in just over a week, it will be over. You think a lot now about what you'll do when, after three years of monotony, it's time to enter the new session. But it's weird too, how now it seems like things are just starting to fall into place. You've finally broken down some of the walls surrounding a particular grumpy troll.

Karkat. What were you even supposed to think about Karkat. At your first meeting, he had clearly loathed you. He called you an insufferable prick. He picked fights. He made it seem like he wanted to spend all three years antagonizing you until one day, sometime in the second year, it occurred to you that his attacks had waned. He would still seek you out, but your violent fights had been devolving into long arguments, and then to calm debates, and eventually... conversations. He liked to talk. Nothing would ever change that. He liked the sound of his own voice apparently. But what confused you was how he preferred to talk to _you_.

For a while now your schedule has been to wake up, go down to own of the larger labs to eat, bump into Karkat, and wander the halls with him talking until you were both tired, then eat a large meal again, and return to your rooms for another sleep. 

There was no night and day. You felt like these cycles were shorter than days on earth were. So in a thousand days you really felt like two thousand had already passed.  
But things weren't so bad.

Now you wander the halls looking for your friend. You are finally allowed to call him your friend. You've just spent close to an hour convincing him you will stay his friend even when you see John again. His doubt was so strange to you.

But the strangest thing of all is the deep irking feeling you have that friend is not the right word at all.

You find them. Karkat and Terezi, sitting on the lab floor. Terezi is still only wearing her boxers and cape. The stench of Faygo is on everything. She sees you and gets up.

"I really should go." That's all she says. She looks at you, then at Karkat, then leaves the room, almost running.

You kneel beside Karkat. 

"We'll do what we can, but she needs to work through this for herself."

He is sitting cross-legged, staring at the floor.

"She'll be okay. Terezi's smart, I promise she'll be okay."

You reach out and touch his hair. Then all of a sudden he is clinging to you, his head buried in your shoulder. He isn't crying, but you can tell he is sinking fast into a numb depression that even leaving the meteor won't pull him out of. You can feel it when you hold him. You stroke his hair. You know he doesn't have Gamzee as a moirail anymore, if he ever did to begin with. He doesn't have anyone to tell him things will be okay. Just you.

You don't know much about troll romance. You don't quite know what will happen, but you do the only thing that really makes sense right now: you run your fingers over his hair and let out a low shush.

He was shaking before, but now he goes still. You make the motion again. You sit with him on the floor and shoosh him and stroke his hair for close to ten minutes. He is sitting nearly on your lap.

"Dave."

"Yeah?"

''Are you... Nevermind."

"What is it?"

"Thank you. That's all."

"Kay."

The next hour is spent in silence. You just sit with him leaning into you. And then suddenly,

"You don't have quadrants."

"No. I guess I don't."

"But then... I mean you don't feel things like... like being pale."

"Doesn't mean I don't care about you."

He thinks this over for a bit.

"Why?"

"What do you mean why?"

"Why do you even care about me that much? Enough to want to be friends with me? To do this? Shoosh pap me when I needed it even though you don't feel that way about me? I'm not making any sense I'm sorry. I guess what I want to know is, how _do_ you feel about me?"

His words all come out in a rush. Your chest constricts as you ask yourself all the same questions.

How do you feel about Karkat?

You start talking, slowly. You work out your thoughts as you go.

"Humans don't have quadrants. We feel the same things you do, but they get all mushed together. We feel hate, and pity, and sexual attraction, and platonic attraction. The want to comfort our friends and lovers, the want to interfere when we see friends fight. But all those things you've divided into these neat little boxes... we just feel it all, all mixed up. We call it love."

"That sounds confusing."

"It's confusing as hell. Poets have been trying to explain it for centuries and they still can't agree. It's impossible to describe. Impossible to understand without feeling it yourself. It's almost too strong of an emotion to bear. When you fall in love with someone, really in love with them, you want them so bad it hurts sometimes. You want to hold them, comfort them, kiss them... scream at them sometimes, tease them, fight with them. But you just care about them so much you don't know what to do with yourself and you just start making excuses to see them, talk to them, be around them. Can you even begin to imagine it Karkat? Can you even begin to understand what it would be like if you felt black and pale and gray and red all at once for one person?"

"Dave?"

You draw deep breaths. You feel your heart pounding against your chest as you realize how much just came out of your mouth.

"Dave... are you in love with me?"

And the words are coming out again before your brain stops them.

"Yes. Yes, Karkat. I- I love you so much it's killing me. I've been in love with you for months but I don't think I knew it. It doesn't matter. Yes, I love you. Damn your quadrants, I want to be your everything. I want- I want you to understand what it means to be in human love. Even if you don't love me back, if just wish I could make you understand what it is I'm feeling. You are never gong to see me with my heart on my sleeve again. But right now... there it is. I love you."

"I think I love you too."

You don't quite dare believe it. He stated it so simply, so carefully. The 'I think' wasn't so much uncertainty as delicacy, like he was stepping onto ice and waiting to see if it would hold. But he said it.

"It's like I'm pale for you," he continued. "You calmed me down, you brought me hope again with so few words, I didn't think it could be anything but moirailegiance. I was- I was so happy. I thought, just then, that I wanted you for a moirail more than anything. But then I started to worry again. That you wouldn't want that. That you wouldn't want anything more than your strange human friendship."

"We can be mwahraylses if you want. I mean, being tight bros who cuddle and shit, that's totally fine if you-"

"Shut up I'm not done. You just gave a few monologues, let me talk. I wanted to be your moirail at first. But you really are more than that. With Rose and Kanaya together, Terezi out of the question, Gamzee out of the picture entirely, you're the only one I have left. You're all I have left Dave. And you're... god fucking dammit you are attractive, okay? You are strange and alien and I have no fucking clue what you have in your pants but you're attractive."

"You're cussing again."

"So?"

"You must be feeling better."

And then you both start laughing. Your voices are both rough and you haven't laughed in months and you don't know why you're doing it but you just start laughing and then he's crying. He's been bottling up so much for so long that it's all coming out like a dam has fallen apart. He's sobbing but he's still laughing in between and then out of nowhere he is kissing you.

And it is the most wonderful thing. You kiss him back. You think you might be crying too, but you keep kissing him. It's a little sloppy and salty and neither of you are very good at it, but you've never felt like this in your life, and you don't want it to stop.

**Author's Note:**

> Not the first fanfic I've ever written, but my first to be posted here on AO3. 
> 
> There might be a second chapter, but probably not soon.


End file.
